Aquatic Faunal Survey of the Lower Amazon

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A team of biodiversity specialists will inventory the free-living aquatic sponges, flatworms, annelid worms, mollusks, crustaceans, and fishes of the freshwater habitats of the lower Amazon basin of Brazil. This region is remarkably poorly sampled in comparison to other parts of the basin, and remains one of the last frontiers for scientific discovery in the tropics. Investigators from institutions in the U.S., Brazil and other countries will undertake a multi-habitat, multi-season series of expeditions to collect, photograph, identify, catalog, and analyze the aquatic fauna. The project will yield large geo-referenced collections of specimens, produce on-line and printed faunal guides, generate species descriptions, taxonomic revisions, and synthetic studies of the ecology and evolution of Amazonian aquatic animals, and will provide unique opportunities for student training.The collections, data, and products generated by this project will serve as a lasting resource for understanding how the extraordinary diversity of the Amazon is generated and maintained, how resilient this diversity is to human pressure, and how it can be protected. Project results will therefore be valuable to professionals in fisheries and natural resource management, ecology, biogeography, paleontology, geology, evolutionary biology, archaeology, and anthropology. This project will also benefit people of the Amazon whose livelihoods are dependent upon aquatic resources, and members of the public worldwide who wish to learn more about the Amazon?s fascinating yet threatened aquatic life.